Getting children off the streets and back in school helps fight crime
“I didn’t feel like going to school here. My mother didn’t want to send me. She said I was wasting her money.” Nadima (13) has been off school for six months since she moved to live with her mother in Manenberg. She spends her days hanging out with other truants or walking some of the Cape Flats’ most dangerous streets alone.
Nadima is perched on one of four filthy beds crammed into her mother’s shack, explaining herself to Ursula Higgins, coordinator of the Truancy Reduction Project. “Does your mother know it’s illegal for you to be at home under the age of 14?” Higgins asks gently. No, she doesn’t, and Nadima would like to go back to school because she wants to become a doctor. “Do you think your mother can afford the fees [about R80 a year]?” “If she can spend money on drink, she can pay for me to go to school,” replies Nadima.
Higgins promises to come back and speak to her mother later — crucial to the job of tracking down truants is the unannounced drop-in. As well as coordinating the project, Higgins, a pastor, is one of eight learner support officers (LSOs) appointed by the Department of Safety and Security to work with truants in Manenberg.
The Truancy Reduction Project, a nine-month pilot costing R300 000, was born of tragedy last November, when a pupil was shot dead at Edendale Primary. Community workers, teachers, clergy, local and national government rallied to promote schools as centres of safety. They identified truants as rich picking for gangsters who use them in drug dealing and prostitution. “We wanted to find a way to cut off their supply,” says Higgins.
Each officer is given a list of truants from the teacher’s register and visits homes to find out why the child is off school and what must be done to get them back.
Althea Cupido, the LSO at Downville Primary, has been encouraged by parents’ reactions when she calls. “They’re usually surprised but they’re glad we’re taking the trouble to help. No one’s been really hostile yet.”
That is perhaps surprising, considering the can of worms the LSOs are opening. Principal of Downville Primary, Edmund Treu, says it’s no wonder some children don’t make it to school in the mornings. “There are so many domestic problems.”
Most depressing for Higgins are reports of sodomy. “Some boys are paid R10 by bigger boys. The community talk about it as if it’s nothing. They say, ‘What are you raving about? They’ve been doing child abuse for years.” Since March, the project’s LSOs have reported seven suspected cases of child abuse to the police. They know they are just scratching the surface. To avoid depression, they attend weekly debriefing sessions at Cape Town’s Trauma Centre, where they can offload some of the pain they absorb from the children.
Edmund Treu welcomes an increased attendance at Downville. “Maybe 50 more are coming now, out of 800 in the school. But of course that varies; some kids come for a while, if the LSO is on their case but will stop when the LSO moves on.” One such kid is 11-year-old Dion, who stopped coming to school when his father started hitting him for asking for food. After home visits by LSO Cupido, he returned to classes but his attendance is now sporadic because the abuse has started again. Cupido presented a report to social services in the hope that an interdict will be granted against his father.
Forced by the huge demand to move on from learners who still need long-term support, the LSOs have turned elsewhere for help.
A parents’ group has been set up where mothers and, more rarely, fathers talk about their pain.
A drop in the ocean it may be, but in only two months the Truancy Reduction Project has brought children back to school. It has also met widespread community support. Higgins describes people cheering her on the way to a home visit: “‘Go fetch them, go fetch them.’ That’s what keeps you going.”
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, August 18, 2000.